


Mickey doesn't work here anymore

by ingwertee



Series: codas: season 11 [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: I salute the tag, M/M, Season 11, coda: 11x01, mentions of depression, mickey & the gallaghers, mickey the old army employee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27950204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingwertee/pseuds/ingwertee
Summary: Coda: 11x01. After the others head home, Ian and Lip talk.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Series: codas: season 11 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046920
Comments: 4
Kudos: 134





	Mickey doesn't work here anymore

**Author's Note:**

> friends I am begging the writers of this show to bring some tästé to this final season but we are one episode in and my old army tag is already obsolete so I am scared. 
> 
> this coda contains: mentions of a pandemic, mentions of depression, mentions of alcoholism, and some language.

The group begins to disperse around eleven that night. First, Kev begs off, taking Gemma and Amy’s hands in his. Says he’s gonna put them to bed. V stays a little while longer, deciding she likes drywalling more than she thought she would.

But it’s late, and Fred has been out for an hour now, and the lot of them can only work so quietly. Soon Tami makes the executive decision that the others should head home for the night, too.

Ian’s in the kitchen with Lip, cleaning up the paper plates and putting away the extra pizza. As the others say their goodbyes and file out, Ian sees Mickey listening intently to something Carl says, pale arms crossed against his chest.

He turns around, once, tosses out a “hey! You comin’?” His gaze doesn’t quite meet Ian’s. He’s drunk from the alcohol he’s been drinking all day, the beers he’s been drinking since the morning finally catching up to him. 

“Yeah, I’m right behind you.” Ian calls back from the kitchen. “You go ahead.”

“All right.” Mickey shrugs, and then Liam’s tugging his arm, wanting to tell his uncle something, and Carl’s still there, too, and soon the two younger Gallaghers herd Mickey out the door.

Lip tosses the last of the paper plates in the trash, leans against the sink. Ian follows suit, shoulder bumping his brother’s when he settles his back against the counter.

There’s a brief lull, where the only noise is the water running in the bathroom – Tami getting ready for bed – and then Lip clears his throat.

“You gonna go or what?” Lip asks, not unkindly.

“You gonna make me?” Ian asks.

Lip shrugs. “Kinda tired.” He glances at his younger brother. “Somethin’ on your mind, man? You and Mick good?”

Ian nods, but he’s looking down. “We’re good,” he says, finally.

“When did this start?” Lip asks, bringing up their conversation from earlier in the day. “The money thing. Thought you two were on the same page.”

“Yeah,” Ian sighs. “Well, that was before Mickey lost his job.”

“Yeah.” Lip echoes Ian’s sigh. “Yeah, that wasn’t great.”

\--

This is the story of how Mickey Milkovich lost his mall job.

Well, first of all, there are a couple of moving parts. Mostly, it’s the global pandemic. The economy. Things out of their control. But it’s also Mickey’s deep hatred for Old Army, and the North Side, and the lilac polo he had to unironically wear as a part of his uniform, and the job as a whole – and look, it’s not like Mickey’s gonna beg and plead for his mall job back.

Ian will admit he didn’t keep good tabs on Mickey once everything went to shit. He mulls this over, often, when he’s at work now moving boxes or during these talks with Lip, where Lip listens while taking care of Fred or listens while he works on some household task and Ian vents.

“I think I let him think this was what I wanted.” Ian says. “You know? Back in March.”

"March?” Lip quips. “When was that, two years ago?”

It’s true. The Gallaghers had so many balls in the air back when the pandemic first hit Chicago, slowly at first and then all at once. There was still the fallout from Debbie’s case – getting her out of jail and tracking down a free moment of time in the public defender’s busy to schedule to say _please, can’t you do something,_ to say, _she’s really a good person, she—_ but then stopping, not quite knowing if that was true, not quite knowing if, despite Fiona’s efforts, despite Lip’s efforts, if Debbie had managed to be “good” in the way her lawyer would understand the word.

So there was Debbie. And there was Franny, by extension, confused and upset and missing her mother, and then angry, and then upset again. The brothers were in charge of her while Debbie was in jail, each carving out an hour or two a day to watch her.

And then there was Lip’s relapse and the goons Mickey’s dad had hired to shoot up the honeymoon suite (which Mickey and Ian ended up not talking about, they decided fuck it, let’s keep that one to ourselves) and somehow, through all that, Mickey managed to clock in regular hours at the mall up North.

Five days a week he’d slip on that godforsaken polo and the goddamned khakis and his stupid little nametag and the dopey headset and he’d stalk around the clothing store, muttering to himself how stupid this was, hoping – _praying_ – someone would just try to pull something in his presence so he could really take a whack at them. Ian knows this because that’s exactly how Mickey would describe his day at work, when he’d trudge back home at the end of the day, jaw clenched so tight that it would take thirty, forty minutes for Ian to get Mickey to loosen up at night, when he kissed him, when he pressed his hands gently into Mickey’s arms so he could feel the exact moment the tension began to leave his husband’s body.

“Hey hero,” Carl would smirk when Mickey’d come home, “save any lives today?”

If Mickey was in a tolerable mood, he would say “fuck off, bitch.” If Mickey was especially pissed, he’d take a menacing step towards Carl, and Carl, despite his brazen, thickheaded obstinance, would duck out of the room.

But. At the week’s end, when Mickey would come home with a paycheck, Ian would feel so relieved. Not just for the money – although, of course, this was always a top concern – but because he knew Mickey was still working his legal job, that he spent his day doing legal things and took his legal paystub to his PO as proof so he could stay here, here and not prison, here and not somewhere Ian wasn’t.

“Thank you,” Ian would say, honestly, earnestly, trying to convey through just one look how much this meant to him.

Mickey would brush him off, uncomfortable. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.”

It works for a few months and then spring comes around and also a deadly virus and then no one’s working. The whole city closes down. Debbie’s laid off first (she would have lost it anyway, sex offender registry and all). Tami’s salon shuts down. Lip’s shop shuts down. Carl and Liam can’t go to school. The warehouse where Ian had just started working shuts down, but only temporarily.

And Mickey. Like the rest of stores in the mall, Old Army shuts down. Mickey gets a phone call in the evening after work, while he’s watching television with Liam.

“What did your boss say?” Ian asks when Mickey comes upstairs to their bedroom, tosses his phone on their bed.

“Ain’t gotta go to work in the morning.” Mickey says, and he’s pleased. Flops onto the bed, settles on his back. “I could get used to that.”

“But you still work there, right?” Ian says, worry seeping through his voice despite his efforts. “They didn’t let you go?”

“Gallagher,” Mickey says, and his face has softened. He reaches out a hand, finds Ian’s knee. “Your sister got fired ‘cause she’s a perv. I’m not gonna get fired.”

“Tami and Lip, they could—”

“They still have their jobs, man. Just because we aren’t working right now doesn’t mean we never will. Hell, _no_ one’s working right now. Not unless you got one of those computer jobs.” Mickey assures Ian. “Besides,” he says. “The only reason I’m working there to begin with is ‘cause my PO worked out a deal with the place. They’re not gonna back out on the deal.”

“You sound certain.” Ian says.

“Yeah.” Mickey shrugs. “Well, they’re also scared of me.”

It takes just a few weeks of shutdown before Mickey’s boss at Old Army decides not to be scared of Mickey anymore, apparently. He’s laid off.

Ian’s not exactly sure on these details. He thinks maybe Mick was laid off earlier than he said he was. Maybe he had been the whole time, when the store was first shut down.

Ian’s unsure because the constant threat of the pandemic, the being without a paycheck, the uncertainty of it all – it gets to him in April. All the stress compounds and then one day he ceases to function.

He remembers he’s helping Liam set up an area in his room where he could “go” to school, he and Ian boxing up the contents on Liam’s bookshelf so they could take that out and put in a narrow table and folding chair. He remembers taking a break from boxing books and toys to sit down on Liam’s bed, Liam’s school-issued Chromebook on his lap. He remembers trying to figure out if he could hack into his neighbor’s wifi notwithstanding his limited knowledge of technology, and maybe it was how helpless he felt at the moment that got him. Maybe it was the fact that they all weren’t working still, none of them was back at work yet, and they had bills to pay and POs to make happy and mouths to feed and spotty wifi and Ian just feels himself begin to grow heavy. Weighted. He stares at the computer screen but he’s not really looking at anything, his eyes could be closed and he would get the same experience. All he really sees is fuzzy white light. He thinks, dully, in the back of his mind, _not now not now not now_ , but he doesn’t have the energy to act on his thoughts, to do anything differently. He just stares.

Liam doesn’t understand at first, too busy setting up his room, but it soon clicks, and he gently takes the Chromebook out of Ian’s hands. Ian doesn’t react.

“I think you should take a nap.” Liam suggests, and Ian blinks once, twice, struggles against the heaviness and foggy vision.

“Yeah.” Ian says. “I guess I’m just tired.”

And then he doesn’t remember a lot. He thinks maybe he just laid down in Liam’s bed and went to sleep, above the covers. He doesn’t hear Liam leave the room. If he was more aware of himself he would have stopped Liam, would have told him he didn’t want any trouble. That it’s hard to be discreet when everyone’s stuck at home, and soon the herd of Gallaghers bound up the stairs, eager to poke their heads into Liam’s room and diagnose Ian for themselves.

Mickey manages to get Ian out of bed, drags him over to their room, deposits him in their bed. Shuts the door so Ian can have some privacy. And then Mickey settles into bed next to Ian, gently tugs him into his arms. He doesn’t say anything.

Ian stays in bed for the next three days.

\--

“I was worried about that.” Lip says, then, when Ian lapses into silence. “When this whole thing started, I thought, you know, this is great for an addict. If I can’t go anywhere, then I can’t go to bars, I can’t go to liquor stores… it was like, I don’t know, it was like all of those options shut down and I was just here. Here with my baby and Tami and nothing to drink.” He smiles at Ian, sadly. “But it’s different for you. Being at home like this, I mean.”

“It was like being back in prison.” Ian says quietly.

Lip stares at his brother for a moment, then nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess it was.” He crosses his arms across his chest. “But you’re better. Got you in to see your doctor. Upped your meds. You’re back at work. Overall, quick fix.”

Ian huffs out a laugh. “Right,” he says. “Quick fix.”

“Yeah,” Lip says, knowing the words didn’t mean much. “I know.”

“Somewhere during that time, Mick started doing muscle work again.” Ian says. “I don’t know when. I think he got laid off and then a few weeks passed, a month, maybe, and then he started doing…I don’t know.”

“Well, once a Milkovich.” Lip says. When he sees Ian cringe he backtracks. “Listen, man, just ask him about what happened. Say your timeline’s fucked up. He’ll tell you. And if he doesn’t, we’ll look into it.”

“‘Look into it?’”

“You know Carl’s a cop now.” Lip shrugs. “We’ll find out what shit he’s been up to.”

Ian sighs. “I’ll talk to him.” He says, more to himself than to Lip. “I will. Sometimes he – sometimes it takes a couple tries, with Mickey. To get him to come around.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a dick.” Lip agrees. Ian laughs.

“He’s not.” He insists.

“Okay, he’s not.” Lip echoes. “You know him best. All I know is this: it’s been a few months now and we’re still dealing with this virus shit. Who knows how long this could go on? You started working again, Tami and I are working again…”

“I know.” Ian says. “Yeah. I know.”

“It’s not my place to tell you how to talk with your husband, man.” Lip says. “But, I guess, you know, _talk_ to him.”

“Yeah.” Ian rubs a hand along his face. “Okay, I will. I promise.”

“Okay, c’mere.” Lip says, beckoning Ian towards him. They hug. “Now I _am_ kicking you out. I gotta sleep man. Fred’ll be up in an hour.”

“Thanks for listening to me.” Ian says.

Lip pats his brother’s back. “Anytime, man.” he says. “You know that. Anytime.”


End file.
